Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image generating apparatus and a control method therefor.
Description of the Related Art
Mainly in the medical field, active research has been conducted on a photoacoustic apparatus which obtains information related to an object on the basis of acoustic waves (photoacoustic waves) generated by irradiating the object with light. By repeatedly irradiating the object with light at varied positions and reconstructing acquired photoacoustic signals, three-dimensional information of the object can be obtained. In addition, it has become prevalent to use the three-dimensional information acquired on the basis of the photoacoustic waves for diagnosis.
There is a trade-off relationship between the time spent to generate an acoustic wave image and the image quality. In other words, as more time is spent to generate the acoustic wave image, the image quality can be increased. The same applies also to the reconstruction of the acoustic wave image from photoacoustic signals in a photoacoustic imaging apparatus. In particular, the reconstruction of three-dimensional information involves a large amount of data and, depending on the content of processing, time as long as several to several tens of hours is needed. Accordingly, to make use of an acoustic wave image reconstructed from the three-dimensional information for diagnosis, it is desired to eliminate the trade-off.
For example, in the invention described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-209890, in an ultrasound imaging apparatus, the density of the sampled points to be measured or the density of image data used when image reconstruction is performed is varied to change the resolution of a three-dimensional image. This allows the time required to display the image to be adjusted.